Baby-Sitters Beware (7 page)

I said, "You and I were wearing nametags, Abby. He could have seen those, remembered

our names, and tracked us down that way. But how does he know we're connected to the rest of the BSC?"

Mary Anne said, "Maybe he picked up one of our fliers and saw your name?"

"It’s possible," I said. "But pretty remote. We haven't given those out in awhile."

"He followed us that night?" suggested Abby and then immediately answered her own question. "No. If you're running from the scene of a crime, you don't stop to follow someone home."

"No, it doesn't make sense, does it?" Stacey sighed. She finished the last of her apple and stood up. "I've got to book," she said. "See you later."

"I guess we have a mystery on our hands," said Claudia. She didn't sound all that unhappy at the prospect.

"It’s possible," I said. I gave the green Jell-O on my plate another poke. It quivered in what I can only describe as a suspicious manner. Was it alive? Was it a slimy oyster in a green disguise? "But the only mystery right now is how this Jell-O could . . ."

I looked up and caught Mary Anne's eye. She gave me what was, for her, a warning glare.

"Never mind," I said quickly. I ate my Jell-O.

Business was brisk that afternoon at the BSC meeting. Five minutes after I'd called the meeting to order, we'd taken three phone calls.

None of them anonymous. None of them hang-ups. All of them from clients we knew.

"I'm not sure I'd want to take a job with a new client right now," Claudia observed thoughtfully, when I pointed out this important fact. "I mean, the phone calls seem to have stopped. But maybe whoever it is, is just planning something worse."

Jessi's eyes widened. "Worse?" she repeated. "Worse how?"

"Wow, Claudia, you're right!" Abby exclaimed. "He calls us up, he pretends he wants a baby-sitter. He gives us a false address, we go there. It's a dark and stormy night. The door opens. We go inside and . . . eeeeek!"

We all jumped about a hundred feet into the air. Claudia threw up her hands and popcorn sprayed all over her room.

Abby, who'd been sitting on the floor, fell back against the side of Claudia's bed laughing. "Gotcha!" she cried.

The phone rang. I picked it up, fixing Abby

(who alone was still laughing) with a Look. It was Mrs. Arnold, requesting a sitter for her twins, Carolyn and Marilyn. I took the call without saying any names then hung up the phone. I caught Mary Anne's eye, stared hard at her, then winked very, very slightly.

"It's a new client," I announced.

Claudia froze in the act of picking up the popcorn. A hush fell over the room. Abby even stopped laughing.

"Are you serious?" Abby asked.

I nodded. "Friday night. At a house on Elm Street." I kept staring at Mary Anne. "What does the appointment book look like for Friday night?"

Mary Anne flipped open her book. She ran her finger down the page. "Jessi — no, it’s at night. I can't, I have a date." She lifted her eyes from the page. "Abby, you're the only one who is free. Can you do it?"

"Ah, well, ah . . ." Abby looked wildly around the room. "But, uh — Elm Street?"

I couldn't keep it together any longer. I cracked up. "Gotcha back!" I said.

Another moment of silence and then everyone began to hoot.

"Good one!" said Claudia.

"Excellent acting, Mary Anne," put in Mal.

Abby, her face red, said, "Okay, okay. I owe

you one, Kristy Thomas and Mary Anne Spier."

When we'd settled down (and laughed off some of the tension that had been building up), we set up the baby-sitting job for Mrs. Arnold (for Tuesday afternoon, which Mal took). Then Jessi said, "I have some new business, sort of."

"Okay," I said.

"It’s Becca. She told me she's seen a man with a blue tattoo around Stoneybrook."

"A blue tattoo!" Stacey exclaimed. "What kind of tattoo? What did he look like? Remember, that counterfeiter we helped catch? I think he had a blue tattoo. I can't remember where."

Jessi shrugged. "I thought that guy went to prison for counterfeiting."

"It's in the notebook somewhere," murmured Mary Anne.

Claudia picked up the club notebook from her desk and handed it to Stacey. Stacey made a face. "Great," she said. "I have to go through all this to look up the blue tattoo? I spend enough time with this notebook writing up my sitting jobs. Bummer."

She gave a big, theatrical sigh and plopped the notebook open on her lap (she was sitting

cross-legged on Claudia's bed) and began to rifle through the pages.

I looked at the notebook. It was pretty thick. In fact, it looked like the notes from a thousand classes at school. It was easy enough to look up past sitting jobs; all we had to do was check out the date in Mary Anne's appointment book and then look up that date in the notebook, since all the entries have dates at the top. But there was no way of looking up specific things, no index, no table of contents. Too bad we hadn't kept a separate mystery notebook, I thought.

This shows how rattled I was by the mystery. I had this stupendous, brilliant idea and I didn't even realize it right away. I just sat there in my chair, frowning, watching Stacey go through the notebook.

It actually took me a whole minute before I shouted, "That's it!"

Everyone jumped again. Clearly this mystery was getting on our nerves.

"Will you stop that?" Claudia complained.

"Sorry," I said. "But listen. Why don't we keep a mystery notebook? I mean, we have enough material for a separate book. And then we could look things up in it, and use it to help solve cases as we go along."

"Cases? You think we're going to be solving lots more mysteries?" teased Mary Anne.

"The way things are going, it could happen," I said.

"True." Mal looked thoughtful. "I think it’s a great idea."

"Just one problem," Claudia pointed out. "Who's going to go through the notebook and put all the old mysteries together? I don't volunteer."

"Me either," said Abby.

Mal said, "I will. Volunteer, I mean. It sounds like fun."

"Sounds like a book report," said Claudia. Then another thought struck her. "Oh, no! We'll have to write in another notebook!"

The phone rang twice more. We set up two more jobs — with regular clients. Then the meeting was over.

Stacey handed the BSC notebook to Mal. After making a careful note, she also gave Mal some money. "For the mystery notebook," she said.

"Thanks," said Mal. "I'll let you know when I find the stuff about the man with the blue tattoo."

"We have to begin investigating right away," I said. "Like tomorrow. Tuesday. Morning."

"We get the point, Kristy," said Mal. "I'll buy the notebook tomorrow."

"Because we're leaving for Shadow Lake at the end of the week, don't forget." I stood up and put on my jacket and picked up my pack. "And guess what? A huge snowstorm is supposed to be coming. I just hope it hits Shadow Lake the same time we do. It's about time we had some good luck."

Famous last words.

Chapter 8.

Shannon.

"Shannon."

"Hi, Kristy. What’s up?" I asked.

"Can you go to the library with some of us 'tomorrow?"

"Sure," I said. Then I remembered to ask, "What for?"

Kristy told me about Mr. Seger and his mysterious burglary. She also told me about the mystery notebook.

"It’s a fact-gathering mission," she said. "We're looking for information."

"Also known as dues?" I suggested.

"Of course," said Kristy. "We're going to put everything we learn into our notebook and see what we come up with."

"See how things add up. See what V is in the equation," I said.

"Have you been talking to Stacey already?" asked Kristy.

"No," I answered, trying not to laugh. Kristy can be pretty intense sometimes. But then, scary things had been happening to the BSC — and they would be even scarier if they were tied together.

Maybe that’s why I wanted to laugh — I was scared. Sometimes being scared affects people that way. We made plans to meet.

Shannon.

The next afternoon, Kristy, Claudia, and Abby were waiting for me on the front steps of the Stoneybrook Public Library.

"Mal's on a stakeout," said Kristy. "We're going to take separate notes and incorporate them into the mystery notebook as soon as she's brought it up to date." "Stakeout?" I said.

"Sitting at the Rodowskys'. Keeping an eye on the Seger residence," Kristy explained in what sounded suspiciously like police-ese. "Okay, okay," I said. "Lead on, Sherlock." "Agatha," said Abby. "Agatha Kristy. Get it?"

We all groaned and went inside. Where does Abby get her awful puns? As we passed the desk, Abby whispered, "Okay, spread out and try to act normal." She waved to Mrs. Kishi and gave her a big grin. "Hi!" she said. "Read any good books lately?" Claudia said, "You are so weird. And my mom's heard
 
that line
 
about a
 
thousand times." She waved to her mom, too, and shrugged her shoulders. Mrs. Kishi gave us a puzzled smile and we walked toward the computer catalogue. "How do you look someone up in the library?" Kristy asked. "Apart from the phone book, I mean."

Claudia said, "You can look in the Stoneybrook Who's Who. Also the news index of the newspaper."

"Wow. Okay." Kristy nodded approvingly. "Let's start with the Who's Who."

"How did you know that, anyway?" Abby asked Claudia.

."My mother is a librarian and my sister is a genius," Claudia replied. "I know these things." She grinned. "Besides, I asked Janine last night."

"Did you tell her what was going on?" asked Kristy.

"No." Claudia grinned again. "You know Janine. She likes knowing the answers to questions. So I asked her a bunch of questions and this was just one of them."

"Sneaky. Devious. Excellent," said Kristy. She turned and stopped again. "Where is the Stoneybrook Who's Who?"

"That I didn't ask her," Claudia admitted.

"I'll go ask at the desk," I volunteered. "If your mom has any questions, I can just say I'm doing research and she'll think it’s for my homework."

But Mrs. Kishi didn't ask any questions. She

just smiled and said hello and asked me how I was doing, and then told me where to find what we were looking for.

A few minutes later we'd staked out a table in the corner of the library, with our backs to the wall (at Kristy's insistence).

"Here it is," said Abby. "Mr. Seger. He's a member of the Stoneybrook Business Bureau — that sounds pretty respectable — his wife is deceased, and he has one son who is in high school, going by his date of birth."

"What’s his son's name?" asked Claudia.

"Noah." Abby looked from Claudia to Kristy. "Do you think he's in high school here? Do you think your sister or your brothers would know him?"

Both Kristy and Claudia shrugged. Then Kristy asked, "Is that all?"

"That’s it." I said. I was disappointed. The Who's Who didn't have very much what's what, in my humble opinion.

"Yeah." Abby sounded disappointed, too.

"Let’s photocopy it," said Kristy. "There could be a clue there."

Abby picked up the book. Pretending to stagger slightly under its weight, she turned toward the photocopy room. "Anybody have change?" she asked.

We pooled our change and Abby, still in her

fake stagger mode, lurched away.

A few minutes later she came lurching back.

"Ha, ha ..." Kristy began. Her voice trailed off.

Abby's face was a ghastly greenish-white.

"What’s wrong?" I asked, jumping up from the table. Abby dropped the Who's Who with a thump. She also dropped several photocopies of the page about Mr. Seger.

And one photocopy, very crooked but quite clear, of a photograph of Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey, and Dawn.

“Where did you find this?" demanded Kristy.

Abby sat down in the chair. Color was returning to her face. Her voice sounded normal, but abnormally serious, for her. "It was just sitting there, staring up at me from the recycle bin."

"Right on top?" I asked.

"Well, not right on top." Abby looked a little sheepish. "I was sort of going through it while the machine was making copies. You know, checking out what other people make copies of. Anyway, there it was, just underneath the first few pieces of paper. It was creepy. I mean, it freaked me out."

"It’s the photo that was taken of us when we solved that pet-napping mystery, with

Dawn," said Kristy. "The one that was in the Stoneybrook News. Remember? Jessi and Mal were on the ends and got cropped out and were majorly annoyed."

"That’s where the burglar found our names!" Claudia exclaimed. "He must have looked up 'Kristy Thomas' in the news index and found our picture in the paper. That’s why all the phone calls and weird stuff have been happening to just the four of us, unless Dawn, all the way out in California — "